This invention relates to the management of a Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (“MRO”) business.
A number of businesses focus their operations on the maintenance, repair and/or overhaul of complex equipment. Aircraft fleet and truck fleet maintenance are two commonly known businesses in this arena. In addition other business that have to maintain expensive complex machinery and other capital equipment such as fully automated manufacturing plans also require the maintenance, repair and/or overhaul of their equipment to keep the business operations running profitably.
Historically, business repair and overhaul function have evolved from the need to resolve issues on the basis of a “necessary evil” in the conduct of maintenance, repair or overhaul with a focus on a support of an existing business. This historical approach has generally been at the expense of the focus on MRO as a separate profit center, with the goals and objectives where the MRO functions not leading to optimal competitive efficiency. As the various industries depending upon fully maintained capital equipment that is compliant to industry or government standards have evolved over time, in a degree of both technical sophistication of their equipment and the oversight of regulatory agencies have increased, efficient maintenance, repair and overhaul has become of greater significance.
Additional pressures on MRO efficiencies have resulted from more industries beginning the process of outsourcing major elements of previously “in-house” maintenance efforts. Complicating the outsourcing decision have been the lack of a real benchmark by which to evaluate which function should be outsourced, as well as the fitness of any vendor being considered for an outsource. The results of the strategic shift to a business model with an opportunity for significant profit, is the need to express the operations of this business in a formal and useful way, and apply various analysis techniques to those understanding to reach continually improving levels of efficiency. Moreover, the need to apply new and innovative methods and technologies to the numerous MRO tasks drives a need to clearly understand the relationships of those tasks as well as the impact on business. Accordingly, there is a need for a focused and structured process and technology analysis method to support, improve and manage the MRO businesses.